


Abide

by maximum_overboner



Series: Tailspin [4]
Category: Villainous (Cartoon)
Genre: Black Hat-centric, Character Study, Darkfic, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Abuse, Just a generally unpleasant read all around, There's sex in this but my god it's not sexy, You know how I normally do dark comedies. There is no comedy here. It's just dark., really digging DEEP in there, what-if fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 22:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19935784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximum_overboner/pseuds/maximum_overboner
Summary: It's always a shame to lose company assets. Still, for Black Hat, life goes on.And on.And on.





	Abide

**Author's Note:**

> if you're new and you clicked on this and you're like 'aw, hell, this is a series! how much do i need to know going in?' good news! nothing, this is intended as a standalone and can be enjoyed on its own
> 
> if you AREN'T new and you're reading malcon, hello! ;3c consider this a what-if fic. if things had proceeded as normal and flug didn't do what he did. a cautionary fable, if you will
> 
> hope you like it!

Even gods had rituals.

Black Hat sipped his tea. Black Hat read his newspaper.

At precisely five forty-five every morning a man wound his way up the perilous steps of the garden, lit only by his torch. At five forty-seven he set the newspaper on the ground, wrapped in two thin elastic bands. At five forty-eight Black Hat retrieved it, walking down the stairs, his hand on the bannister. At five fifty-five he set a pot of tea to boil. Loose-leaf Earl Grey. And he would wait. He watched the filament of the stove curl, like hot worms. He took the pot into his study, paper under his arm, on a tray. It steeped. He looked out of the window. Pounding rain, clattering on the window. He smiled. He adjusted that little teacup he took a shine to, facing it at four o’clock. The clock chimed six. The old brass clattered. He was in his office. Then, and only then, Black Hat sipped his tea. Black Hat read his newspaper.

He always gave himself a half-hour. His days were spent mired in the practicalities of business. His nights, eaten away by his darker services. Work fought back the boredom but he allowed himself this. One simple half-hour per day. Without worry. Without distraction. Alone, as he wanted. He turned to the business section first, eyeing his investments.

A long life required patient, slow pleasures. Swishing wine in his mouth. A good cigar. A book. A painting. A slit throat. A record. A whore. A song. A snack. An evening to himself every few months, to read. There was a knock at his door. Black Hat didn’t respond. Flug came in anyway. Black Hat sipped his tea. Black Hat read his newspaper.

“Well well well,” Black Hat said, wetting his finger and turning the page. “Aren’t you a sight for sore tits. This better be important.”

Flug stood before him. His posture slack, but his bones stiffer. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry sir.”

“Stop snivelling and speak.”

Flug wrung his coat in his hands, twisting it. His shoulders shook. He brought his sleeve to his eyes, pressing his head into it.

“Stop bawling,” Black Hat chided. “Are you an infant? Are you a child, crying when you’re scolded? Good grief.”

“Dementia’s dead.”

Black Hat blinked. He took a moment to consider his options. He extended his half-hour to forty minutes. Flug sniffled and squalled as if he had actually liked the stupid cow.

“If you have her to hand,” said Black Hat with a nod, “bury her in the back. I’ll have a tombstone made.”

Flug stared at him. He tried to speak.

“That is,” Black Hat said, “if there’s anything to recover. I’ll have the tombstone made anyway. I thought the garden was looking sparse. Was there truly nothing to recover? As messy in death as she was in life? You have to admire that sort of consistency, don’t you? I mean her attitude, of course, not the paste I imagine she is.”

Flug made a horrible noise. Black Hat rolled his eyes.

“I’m trying to lighten the mood. You’re aware she would have found that hilarious?”

“She’s not here to say that,” Flug said.

“I’m aware. Don’t talk back.”

Flug said it before he could think, as much of a reflex as blinking or breathing. “Sorry, sir.” His eyes were smouldering coals under the goggles.

“Don’t do it again. What happened?”

“She was caught out, sir. Surrounded.”

“Gunned down?”

Flug couldn’t answer which was all the confirmation Black Hat needed.

“Too late to send help?”

“Yes.”

“Pity, she was useful. But the job is a dangerous one. Dying in the field is what she would have wanted.”

Flug made that noise again. “If I had only checked the equipment before she left, I could have picked up anything suspicious.”

“When did this happen?”

“A few hours ago, I think. I can’t... I don’t know.” His voice was hoarse. “I don’t know, sir.”

“This happened hours ago and you decided that now was the time to tell me? Do you have any idea how little free time I get? I could have had the appropriate arrangements made by now. Unbelievable. Do you have any idea how selfish you are?”

The coals in Flug’s eyes burned searing hot. His breaths were shaky. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s all my fault.”

“Probably,” said Black Hat, flicking to the news. “Forty is geriatric to the grunts, she would be falling to bits soon enough. Especially with what you did to her.”

“What we did.”

“I suppose. I’m not here to argue semantics. A put-off failure is still a failure. Do better with the next one. We’ll discuss your tardiness at a later date, it seems I’ll be busy today. Alright, dismissed.”

“That’s it?”

Black Hat chuckled, shaking his head. “Anything above an unmarked grave is a kindness from me, Dr Flug.”

“Fuck you.”

Black Hat paused, raising a brow and letting Flug see his bad eye. He looked Flug up and down. “I beg your pardon?”

“Fuck you,” Flug repeated. His voice was gruffer, yet somehow still childish. It was the whining, Black Hat mused, he always was a whiner. “Fuck you.”

“Now now, wishful thinking gets us nowhere,” Black Hat replied. “This isn’t the sort of profession where you get old, doctor. You’re well aware, you’ve been in it long enough.”

Flug gripped Black Hat by his shirt collar. A weak little man with a sad little grip. Black Hat laughed, letting him. In the face of Black Hat’s laughter, Flug pulled tighter and tighter, a scalpel glimmering in his coat pocket. “Are you going to hit me?” Black Hat cackled. “Are you so stupid?”

Flug sounded bitter. “Are you going to kill me?”

“No. That’s what you want, isn’t it? No. I won’t kill you over your temper tantrum. Hit me if you like. I won’t fight back.”

Flug grit his teeth but made no move.

“Oh,” Black Hat cooed, holding Flug’s chin with his fingers. “Is that not what you expected me to say? Hm? Oh, please, Dr Flug, please don’t hit me, I’ll be ever-so-good! Pathetic bastard. Weak. Stupid. Useless. Feeble. You didn’t even like her.”

“I did.”

“Human, then. You can’t be anything but,” Black Hat seethed. He chewed his words like fatty meat, grinding it between his teeth. “It’s disgusting.”

The fabric of Flug’s coat creaked under the pressure. Black Hat could hear him breathe.

“Go on, hit me! You’ve always wanted to, I’ve seen it in your eyes, fine. Hit me! Burst my lip, I won’t fight back. Crack open my eye socket. Isn’t this your dream, Flug? Go on. Get one good hit in. As hard as you can. Burst me open.”

Flug’s breathing grew quieter.

”Unless you’re afraid?” Black Hat jeered. “Unless you’re afraid of what you’ve started?”

Flug’s grip slackened, but he didn’t let go. Black Hat saw confusion and delicious, exquisite fear.

“Hm? Are you reconsidering? But you were the one so dead-set on challenging me, have you no spine? Go on, if you’re going to strike me, strike me!”

Black Hat darted forward, clearing the table and breaking Flug’s grasp. He yanked Flug up by the shirt, holding him upright by the collar, watching his legs kick and flail. Flug gasped, choking as his long neck pressed on the fabric. It was turning red. Black Hat thrashed him, strangling a pup by the leash. He pulled the scalpel from Flug’s coat between two sharp claws. He held it, examined it, watched the light of the room glint off its edge. It was six fourteen.

“Were you going to cut me?” Black Hat snarled, foam flying from his maw. “Are you going to hurt me? You’re mad with grief, aren’t you? Do it.”

“Please,” Flug croaked, “stop.”

“Why stop now? You’re the one that thought this was a good idea.” He pressed the flat side of the scalpel into Flug’s palm, prompting him to hold it. Flug’s grip was loose. Black Hat clenched his hand around Flug’s fist and tightened until he heard a wet pop.

“Please,” Flug cried out, “stop, I’m sorry!”

“No, no,” Black Hat hollered, “you seemed rather insistent! Dementia is dead and I don’t happen to care, doesn’t that enrage you? Doesn’t that upset you?”

“No, sir!”

“Doesn’t that make you angry?”

“No, sir, please!”

“It should!” Black Hat yanked Flug’s hand upwards, bracing the tip of the scalpel between two small scales. “Do it! Do what you’ve always wanted to do. I’ll let it slide this once, prove you’ve got a spine in there, prove you’re angry, prove you’re human, do it! Fucking do it!”

“Please,” Flug bawled.

“Push!”

“Please!”

Black Hat pushed the scalpel into his neck, bulging his eye and gritting his teeth. He grunted, splitting one of the long, wiggling bands that connected his head to his sternum. He panted, not blinking, his breath stinking and cold. Flug was screaming, feeling the pressure of pushing the blade into hard flesh, like wedging an axe in an old tree. He looked away, but Black Hat wrenched his head back. “Look at me, look at me!”

Flug, shaking, made himself. He choked.

“If you’re going to cut me up,” Black Hat yelled, blood pooling in his mouth, “look at me! Look at what you wanted!”

“I didn’t,” Flug cried, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry for grabbing you. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Please.”

“Are you getting off to this? Do you think I want you to hurt me?”

“No, sir, please, I’m not, please!”

“But you’re— so— insistent—”

Black Hat drove it deeper with every pause. His voice was garbled, his tongue splashing in his mouth.

“— On doing it!” he burbled, driving the scalpel further in. He nicked the artery. Blood oozed from his mouth and spilt over his teeth. “Don’t you fucking dare do it again! Do you hear me?”

“Yes!”

Flecks of blood coated Flug’s glasses. He was sobbing.

“Do you hear me?” Black Hat repeated.

“Yes, please, yes,” Flug wailed, “I’m sorry, yes.”

“Get out of my fucking sight!”

Black Hat dropped him. Flug thundered out of the room like a wound-up car, bashing into the walls and catching himself on the door-frame, holding his wrist.

Black Hat pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and mopped the blood, collecting the viscera with scooping motions. All it took was a steady hand and firm guidance to correct bad habits. Black Hat chuckled, shaking his head. He was getting soft in his old age, scolding Flug when he should have killed him for the insubordination. But he was grieving. Even Black Hat wasn’t that cruel, to cut down a man acting in weakness. He hoped Flug was grateful. He hoped it helped.

Black Hat sipped his tea.

Black Hat read his newspaper.

* * *

The study was his favourite room. Opulent enough to shame the poor, worldly enough to shame the ignorant. Clients were always one or the other. Everyone was.

Bar him, of course.

His high-backed chair faced away from the window, flanked by curios and expensive folderols. Various oddities spread across dozens of cabinets and shelves. Trinkets and baubles and his favourite; specimen jars. Two-headed snakes. Inside-out lizards. Warped, elongated cocoons and crunchy, half-made butterfly wings. Something small floating in milky fluid, made opaque by time. No lungs, no eyes, no hearts, no hope. Dead before they knew what they were. Nature was full of cruel jokes. Black Hat liked to laugh along.

The study was lucky enough to entomb an enviable library. Tomes of staggering historical significance; first-editions and collector’s editions and never-printed-since editions. So many, in fact, that Black Hat was still working his way through them, acquiring new ones every week and adding them to the splendidly long ‘to read’ list.

‘The Revolution Of The Heavenly Spheres’. Bought, illegally, for five million dollars a month prior. Moth-bitten and yellowed, it was the height of luxury. But the pride of his collection was his great vault under the manor, flanked with marble hallways and glistering lights, like jewels themselves. A very large jar for a very large specimen.

Black Hat smiled. With his eyes, as well.

The fire popped, sooty and half-spent. Black Hat heard a knock at his door and opened it with a flick of his wrist, still reading. A familiar shadow pooled at his desk. When he felt it stop, he spoke. “Something isn’t right about the Gongsun contract,” he said, sipping his tea. “I’ve been thinking about it all day and something... I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I don’t like what we’re doing. What do you make of this, Dr Flug?”

The woman didn’t react. The bun pulled her face into a taught, unmoving sheet, skin painted over bone. Black Hat wondered if her face would unanchor if he removed her earrings, slop right off like an over-pulled curtain. “Pardon me,” Black Hat said as if this was the first time this had happened. “It’s been a long day.”

“Yes, sir,” Dr Alvarado replied, doing the same.

Black Hat wished Flug were still alive, he was easy to rile. Black Hat would have as much luck shouting at Flug’s desiccated carcass as he would this woman.

“You don’t think the spokesman seemed eager to please?”

“You’re scary, sir,” she replied. “He would want to appease you.”

“Yes, but appeasement is different. He didn’t play to my withered sense of mercy, or pity, he... I don’t know, it was a rehearsed fear.”

“I don’t think anyone needs to rehearse fear around you, sir.”

Black Hat blinked. “Shut up,” he spat, “I didn’t hire you for quips.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, going colder. “Sorry, sir.”

“Ugh.”

When Dementia died he tutted and rolled his eyes, slithering and snaking and waiting for some other poor sod to come to him and offer their body. And they did; dozens, hundreds, men and women in the prime of their life and unfailingly dedicated to even his most ridiculous whims, but not one of them could tolerate the extensive gene therapy required to produce the same results. On the tenth attempt, Black Hat called Flug into his office to explain what, exactly, was going wrong. Flug, in the weary tone he had developed, explained that some people just weren’t suited to the therapy and it was so wildly unethical that no research was conducted outside of the lab. All he had were his own theories and notes, disjointed and haphazard due to its difficulty, more akin to throwing vegetables in a stew and hoping for the best than empirical science. When Black Hat pressed Flug on his failures he used the term ‘chromosomal shatter’.

Black Hat braced his hand to the desk. It looked like he was about to stand. Dr Alvarado put her hands up, throwing her arms over her head and jerking away. Black Hat saw Flug for a moment, in that movement. He could smell fuel and burning hair and boiling flesh. He sat down again. The room felt warmer.

And when Flug finally died; concave and surrounded by tubing, like those plugged-in machines he loved to tinker with, it left a gap that Black Hat couldn’t adequately fill. Flug was, for all his shortcomings, brilliant. It was rare to find someone who carried expertise in a shrapnel-blast of fields; bioweapons, engineering, robotics, weapons production, research, manufacturing, on and on the list went and Black Hat realized, quite quickly, that he had to either drastically downsize or tolerate more people to keep the business running. He relented, shearing off branches of the company to accommodate his need for quiet. The Black Hat Organization now dealt in illegal imports and one-on-one consultation. Black Hat was always happy to sell a product, even if the product happened to be him.

The smartest man in the world and Black Hat had worked him to death like a mule. He was never going to get someone like that again. He was spinning his wheels.

Dead at forty on the job.

Dead at fifty from stress.

Dr Alvarado pushed something across the table. It was a small plane of glass, translucent save for the thin black bar at the top. Black Hat touched it, withdrew his hand as if touching a stove, then touched it again. As he fumbled, she took it back and navigated to the appropriate page, handing it over once again. She stood as if waiting for thanks but didn’t receive any.

She pressed her finger to her ear, to one of those little contraptions everyone had. Black Hat couldn’t help but mimic the motion, tapping his finger to cartilage around the hollow of his tympanum. Black Hat imagined dropping an earwig in there as she slept, for his own fun. Yes, he thought, it looked like something horrible was crawling into her ear to eat out her brains, the little she had, and she had only just noticed. Black Hat chuckled. It took his mind off the pervading unease he felt when he looked at the tiny little telephones, or whatever they were. She had explained it countless times. He was half-inclined to ask for another and though she would be duty-bound to do it he wasn’t sure he could handle the embarrassment of it all. He thumbed absently at the cover of the book. They were kept for the joy of keeping them, he heard. They were growing more and more expensive. She was still talking but he found it hard to listen, picking at the leather with his nails, like a child tugging the hem of his mother’s skirt.

“You’re getting a call.”

“Who?”

“Astier.”

“I ask like I’ll know who that is. Jog my memory.”

“Tuesday, twelve o’clock, sir. Purchased melioidosis.”

“Oh, that one.” He snapped his fingers. A wisp of black smoke trailed from his palm, slipping over the desk and out of the room. His phone clattered in on spider legs, scaling the desk and resting at his side. “Put him on shrieker-phone.”

Dr Alvarado tapped at her tablet. “Yes, master.”

Black Hat wedged the receiver between his neck and shoulder, fiddling with his book with his free hand. When he heard the first crackle of the speaker he spoke. “What the hell do you want?”

He tore away some of the leather, rolling it between his fingers.

“I’ll talk to you how I like, what do you want?”

One, two, three, roll, discard. Pick. One, two, three, roll, discard. Pick.

“This isn’t a social call, hurry up.”

One, two. Pick. Three. Roll, discard. Pick.

“No, no, we agreed on the fifteenth. That was outlined in the contract, I gave you a copy. If you need it now you should have ordered earlier.”

One. Pick. Two. Pick. Three. Pick.

“No, I can’t account for ‘changing circumstances’, it’s almost as if that’s your job and I just provide the product. Simper and plead all you like. I am not your mother.”

Discard. Discard. Discard.

“Fine, I’ll check. You!”

Dr Alvarado suppressed a flinch. “Yes, sir?”

“Can you get it done by the eleventh?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“We’re smuggling it from Australia, sir, it doesn’t occur here naturally.”

“Right. And who, exactly, are we bribing to get this done?”

“About thirty people, sir.”

“And who, exactly, are we killing to get this done?”

“Six people, sir.”

“And you can’t just hurry that up?”

“No, sir.”

“How strange, it’s almost as if we’re a business and not a cabal of magicians pulling things out of top hats.” Black Hat wedged the phone to his neck again. “There, are you happy? It can’t be done. Yes, I can bend the laws of reality. No, I’m not doing it for you. No, I don’t care if you need it, it will be here for the fifteenth.”

Rip, tear, discard.

“Fine, whinge! Whinge as much as you like, consider the order cancelled! Non-refundable, goodbye, eat shit and rot, au revoir!”

He slammed down the receiver and swept the phone from his desk, sending it scuttling off to some far corner of the house. Alvarado took a shaky breath. “He’s well connected, sir, other clients—”

“Let them cancel as well.”

“Sir—”

“Hush! Hush, in the name of everything unholy, hush! I have had enough of your ceaseless chatter, hush!”

He sank into his chair, rubbing his temples. He sounded so, so old. How could he sound old, if time didn’t mean anything?

“Am I dismissed, sir?”

“No. Wait until I’m done, I’m thinking.”

“Of course, sir.”

He thought. He thought and thought. “I’m so tired,” he sighed. “I’m so tired.”

Alvarado shifted on her feet, unsure of what to say.

“Go home,” Black Hat said, just audible.

“... Excuse me?”

“Go home, Vanessa. Go home.”

She looked at him, dumbstruck. “But I live here.”

Black Hat rose to his feet again. “Go home!”

“I—”

He swept forward, gripping her painfully by the arms and bustling her out the door. “Go home, leave, get out of my sight and never return, I am done with you and I am done with this, I am tired, go home!”

“Sir—!”

“Leave!”

He pushed her and slammed the door, bracing his arms to it. He panted. Thick spittle fell from his mouth. He was sick of it all. All he needed was himself. Like the good old days. No ties, no obligations, no contracts. Flitting from place to place and doing as he pleased. Yes, he thought. “This is the thing that will do me good.” These humans and their corrupting influence, he wanted to be free of them. He would turn inward and take some well-deserved time for himself. Then, when he was ready, he would inflict himself on the world again, better and sharper, ready to cut. He would head a new, better organization. He would be wonderful and terrible and himself again.

He paced, hands braced to his back. He returned to his book. It lay in tatters. The fire was spent. He left to find the other book, the one he didn’t keep with the others. Cheap, ragged and written in green glitter pen. His junk food.

Dementia’s diary was as scattered as she was. Black Hat thought that diaries were best kept to log thoughts in an orderly manner, easy to turn into action, but her entries were akin to loading up a shotgun with feelings and concepts and unloading it, point-blank, onto the page. He read it, front to back, over and over. He never quite ‘got’ it.

She was infuriating on every level and in some sick way it compelled him to come back and keep trying.

That was her lure.

It was like she was introducing herself to herself, over and over. Wants and lusts, lots of those, fears, insecurities, medical problems, recipes, rarely followed to-do lists, scattered notes of prose and terrible poetry.

She was better at it, near the end. Not good, but better.

What she had for breakfast, what she planned to do, what she thought of the anime she followed. The horrible migraines that floored her for days at a time, persistent joint pain, unruly, painful periods and a terrible menopause, a brain fog that grew thicker by the month and made planning difficult. She wondered if she could plan to be better at planning or if it was doomed from the start. It felt light. Pleasantly self-effacing. She wasn’t the kind of woman to brood, not in that way. The page after was empty. Black Hat closed the book. He dusted glitter from his hand. Where was he? Oh, right, yes. The guest room. He came here when he didn’t want to be bothered. He adjusted his position on the bed. As he moved, dust, scent imperceptible to humans, lunged into the air. He caught it, accidentally, on his forked tongue. Deep in his head, in the very centre, he could smell her. One-millionth of one-millionth of a scent, but unmistakably her; cheap perfume, rot and a strong chemical, like dye. At some point, decades prior, she had sat on this bed. Doing what, he didn’t want to consider, but she was there. It was out before he could think. His voice was a feeble croak, like a dying frog.

“Dementia?”

As quickly she was there she was gone, scattered with the rest of the dust that beamed as he did. He wiped something wet from the corner of his eye, examining it between his fingers. He licked it.

Is it odd to miss a tumour? As disgusting as it is, at the end of the day it’s still yours.

* * *

All men should strive for self-betterment. It was the hallmark of a healthy wit. Broad interests lead to a broad intellect. The arts, the sciences, the study of the natural world. But having a preference was normal and Black Hat considered himself, first and foremost, an artist. And evil was a fine, misunderstood sort of art. Just as he thought himself a fine, misunderstood sort of man.

He was a fantastic musician. A talented painter with an enviable eye for colour (back in the day he would tell people he wasn’t allowed two eyes because he had to give the rest of the artists on this miserable planet a fighting chance), and a talented speaker, when he wanted to be. Business, too, was an art. Even the most inept industrialist stumbled into favourable circumstance now and then; a rival’s collapse, a lucky death, but it took a keen entrepreneurial mind to deftly avoid each and every one of those opportunities. He wasn’t ready, not yet. He had to be ready.

He played his violin, turning his eye to composing. A slip of his hand turned E-flat minor into a discordant mess.

“Humph!”

It was the character of older instruments; refined in manner, unrefined in make. They had whims of their own and only sung when forced. He found it charming, to wrench such pleasant music from something so stubborn. He tapped the bow against the string, feeling for the slightest change. He squinted, doing it again. There was no bite to the note, no grit. It was a simple enough fix to rosin a bow. He retrieved the rosin cake from his desk. It was difficult to see in the dark, but the smell of pine guided him. His strokes stopped.

... How long had he been here?

He finished fixing his bow, slipping the instrument into his coat. Sunlight trickled in through a crack in the curtains. He didn’t need to eat, he didn’t need to sleep, he didn’t need to relieve himself, he didn’t need to do anything that would give him a sense for what an hour was. He was, for all intents and purposes, the perfect creature. Free of waste or distraction, able to focus on the important things.

How long had he been in here?

He walked to the window and brought his hand to the curtains. He held them in his fists and sighed, letting his palms go slack. He walked to the other end of the room, ‘seeing’ in the dark with his tongue, tracking scents and temperatures. He opened the door and walked to the hallway, hit by a wave of cooler, fresher air. Black Hat made his way down the hall, hands braced to his back and his chest thrust forward. He caught sight of himself in a mirror, his reflection muddled with dust, and carried on. He broke his posture and ran back, smearing off the worst of the rot and throwing it to the ground in clumps, caking the leather of his gloves.

He looked different. He wasn’t sure how it happened, or when, if it was sudden or gradual, but this was a completely different Black Hat looking back at him. Him, but Not. It was someone strange and uncanny, and not in the way he enjoyed. His cheekbones sat differently, his jaw was a little thinner, the bags under his eyes looked too hollow. His features had drifted, like ice in a bowl of water. His eye caught a painting of himself in the mirror. He referenced it, pushing and prodding the bones at his face, slowly, like sculpting clay. He came to see someone he recognized but it wasn’t a perfect likeness, it was a good portrait by a poor artist. He touched his face again. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t see it any more, couldn’t make out the little error in placement that threw off the rest of his face. His attempts to find it made him look stranger, he pushed and prodded and reverted in panic.

“No,” he burbled, breaking his jaw and shifting it, hearing it scrape in his head. “No, no, no. No, no—”

What on earth could he do? Reference a photo? Did any survive? Could he find an honest painting? One that was wholly true to what he looked like, free of flourish or theatrics, primping and preening? Could Black Hat find one, one, single image, one, that depicted him honestly, candidly, lacking in even the thinnest sheen of mystique? He pushed and pushed, the movement of one part facilitated the movement of others until none of them, none at all, looked right. He dug a claw into his face, pulling out a great, festering chunk, then another, then another; cold, wet meat and dry, sticky bone.

* * *

  
There was something about the nineteenth century that appealed to him.

The fashion, the music. The inherent appeal of a code. There were certain things you had to do and you had to do them in a certain way, and if you didn’t it was terrible. Books and books of rules, all of them memorized. It filled up the place other people put morals, he assumed.

He thought of it as bondage. Self-imposed limitations for the purpose of pleasure.

Why did he need it, he wondered. He was looking at the ceiling, tracing the ornate pattern with his eye. He could pick any other time. There were thousands of parcels, bundles of human time, to choose from. He had missed the new ones. He looked at his hand. The tattered, blood-soaked leather and the cuff of his shirt, dotted with cabochon cufflinks. He let his arm fall, landing on the mattress with a puff.

It was one of the few things he didn’t resent. It felt right. It was just... Him. He liked it. He thought it was fetching and that was reason enough. He craved that sort of constriction. It was as primitive and rudimentary as everything else on this miserable rock, but he needed... Something. He needed some cliff to wreck against, something to call his as he dashed his head on the rock, over and over, again and again, each day a ceaseless bashing of the inside of his skull. He sighed, finally sat up and trudged off. He summoned his phone. Something to quicken the blood. Knowing the appropriate way to act made iniquity all the sweeter.

He made the call and they arrived, two of them, a half-hour later. Eyes averted, as instructed. One risked a glance at his face. He could tell because he heard it gasp. He didn’t care. They let themselves in, stepping into the dark and closing the door behind them. They didn’t get beyond the hallway.

A man and a woman.

Human beings.

Animals.

These animals with their fluids and their contact and their seething.

They seeped and oozed like open sores and he dug in like a fat, greedy maggot. He moved sullenly, mechanically, a piston in a wheel. The woman braced to the wall, a leg up by his hip, and the man behind him, unbuckling his belt. It was sensation. It was feeling. It was something. The wall shook, knocking his old paintings askew. With a shudder, it was over. He was done. He was done with it all. No more. No more taunting the barnyard animals for his amusement, no more of these mindless things, no more. No more humanity. No more. He shoved them away with some priceless keepsake from his past in place of currency and retreated. Did sex always smell so rancid? Had he blocked it out? He couldn’t remember. He pulled off his glove and pricked the skin on his hand between two claws. Sweat that wasn’t his, running down his back. He pricked again. It was painful, but it... Wasn’t. It was dulled. He did it one more time.

What was this, exactly?

Sensations, feelings, real, honest feelings hidden behind some maddening fog. Figures cut behind fogged glass that he could almost recognize. He recalled that he wasn’t always like this. He thought back to when he was a ‘younger’ man, sempiternal flesh encasing a timeless mind. He did things. He liked things. But he found it impossible to separate what he was, back then, from what he wanted to be. It was impossible to untangle what had really happened from what he wished had happened. The years grew too short, the glass too opaque, the dreams too distant, save for single moments suspended, eternally, in fluid. Collected and displayed in his mind, to peruse at his will. He played them over and over at the expense of everything else, turning his experiences to slurry. And still, he couldn’t help but yearn. To have no past was to be castrated of the only thing that was ever truly, truly his. This wasn’t his culture. This wasn’t his planet. This wasn’t his body, not really. But he couldn’t help it. He played out his life over, and over, and over. What he might have done differently. What he might have said. He was a gelding on the field, looking at the pretty lights of the house over the fence and pleading to be shot.

He wondered what it was he actually wanted. He wasn’t sure, but it was...

It was _something._

Recognizable letters in an unfamiliar language. A strange, alluring something that tugged at the back of his head. He didn’t understand what he ached for, only that it stung. A burrowing, maddening...

_Something._

“What am I doing wrong?” he said, to nobody. His voice was dusty. “What am I doing wrong? I spread terror wherever I go, I am evil itself. I’m everything I ever wanted to be. I am utterly unsurpassed. I’m beyond God in my reach. When will it all...”

Make sense?

Be worth it? Be worth the endless toil? Be worth the price of living on this planet with these apes?

He could leave and start afresh somewhere else. He could destroy this boring little rock and find somewhere new to conquer, some new species to subjugate, some new tongue to roll uneasily in his mouth like a marble. He let himself play make-believe for a moment, a smile on his face. A different rock with different animals to toy with. He could pin them and pluck out their wings, one by one, or peel off their scales and sear them, or suffocate them, or strangle them, or fuck them. He could scald them, or whip them, or bleed them, or crush them, he could do whatever he fancied to these new, shiny things, that didn’t know about Him and his Thoughts and What He Found Pleasure In Doing. He would be dazzling and new and horrible, a shock, something he hadn’t been in years.

But the whimsy, the want to play, faded, leaving him in a cold, dark room, with cold, dark thoughts. He wasn’t a child. He had to consider this properly, front to back. The logistics of it. He stood, lit the long-dead fire, tended to it until he watched it leap to life and spit out heat. When he became accustomed to the light, to the burn in his little pupil, he retreated to his desk. He dragged open a drawer, tearing out rot and splinters. All his ink-pots were gunk, sediment bobbing on top and clumping at the bottom. He thought, rapping his fingers against the desk, breathing in the smell of soot and watching the cobwebs greedily catch the little light he offered. He recalled a gift. He took to his shelves, looking for it, scrabbling by all the other gifts he had accrued, his fearful tributes from subjects and subsidiaries. He moved by his jars, his specimens. He glanced at what used to be a little pink flesh-slip, wet and greasy, covered in branches, suspended in the dead womb of the jar. The milky fluid a deep, ruddy brown. In an old jewellery box, he found it. An ink stick. The solid sort, to be ground on a stone with water. It ground silently in the bowl. He dipped his pen.

‘OPTIONS:’

‘TRIBUTE’

If you put enough monkeys in a room with enough typewriters eventually they rewrite reality. The cults were still active, he could call them to indulge whatever whim he had that day, but he stopped offering his services long ago. But still, if his observations were anything to go by a lack of action incited more prayer, not less of it. He could round them all up, pluck out their best and brightest and force them to find a suitable planet scientifically. Then, when one was found and he could leave, an appropriate ceremony could send him straight there. It would require years of toil, study and sacrifice, but more than that it would require—

He shuddered.

People. With their spittle and their weeping. Braying animals, carting their innards full of shit and pus and cum and bile and stinking up whatever they touched with their foulness. Walking bags of smell. Black Hat retched into his handkerchief. He hadn’t eaten in years, forgetting the taste of blood on his tongue and the feeling of meat in his gut. He couldn’t bear to be like them. Shit, pus, cum, bile, rot, death. Not the pleasurable point of death, the poetic sort where he could wax lyrical about death and birth and the wonderful futility of daring to live in a world that had him in it, the death that was like sex to him. The heinous, messy sort. The part he hated. The practicality of it. It was all leaking. It was all maggots and flies and blood gone thick in the vein, all bowel movements and putrefaction and disease and stench and soft, pale, wobbling eyes in big sockets. He retched again. He struck the note from the list, pulling his sickness with it. ‘TRIBUTE’. He scored through it. He tore off that part of the paper. He ate it.

‘PORTAL’

He could warp. It involved feeling the air for cracks, the slightest change in temperature and scent. When he felt them, felt the thin cracks in the air, he could pry it open and slip between the atoms. He could go anywhere he wanted, like this. Any town, any country, any room at three AM.

Any place he knew.

Black Hat chewed on the end of his pen, taking care not to break it. He wanted to be ‘somewhere else’. He wanted to be ‘not here.’ He didn’t want to be in Korea, or Atreno beach, or trailing in the shadow of a stranger leaving a club at dawn. Black magic wasn’t as beyond comprehension as he wanted it to be. Runes, an alphabet. Sacrifice, a currency. Dreams, a product. It had rules. Rules that seemed non-existent, given what he could do, given what its practice did to even the most cautious, but rules. Ornate blades, studded with gems in the pommel, cut harder and deeper in a belly. Lamens work best when made of fine brass, freshly polished to a glistening sheen. A polite greeting and a firm handshake killed nobody, but a lack of one would.

It’s best to know where you’re going before you leave.

When going somewhere new he often overshot the mark. An inch. A foot if he was harassed. On a promenade at dusk, creaking over the ocean, that was nothing. In space, an overshoot could be fifteen trillion miles. Suspended in black, unable to scramble back when matter breaks behind him. He crossed ‘PORTAL’ from the list. He chewed his pen again, letting out involuntary little grunts and growls when he worked his teeth. He still had to get off this planet, but he had to do it alone. He slapped his forehead.

_‘LEAP!’_

It was so obvious! He could cast off his rudimentary body and hurtle forward. Spring up like a buttered kernel out of a hot pan, leap with a triumphant puff into the great unknown. Carving his way out of the atmosphere and the dreary peril of orbit and send himself thundering through space like a great, dark comet. He didn’t have to worry about being stranded because he would move until he was stopped by something, a rock, a planet, and if it didn’t measure up to his specifications he would simply leap again! All the wonders of the universe, all the dancers on the cosmic stage, performing for him! All the colours swaying for him, light and matter reduced to toys! Black Hat bounded to the door. He leapt the stairs, breaking his legs with a crunch and reconstituted his bones as he shambled. The brass of the door felt cool under his palms and he could smell fresh air, leftover from his guests.

All he had to do was step outside!

His palms remained on the handle, still.

All he had to do was open the door. His new life awaited him. Held back by only a click of the lock. All he had to do was take it, as he took everything else.

It was right there.

Beyond the door.

Beyond the brittle wood of the old door, all the happiness in the world, all the joy, all the curiosity.

One door.

Outside.

Black Hat, slowly, let the handle go. He stood, his head pressed to the door. He heard birds.

“It’s just going to be the same,” he said. “It can’t be anything but.”

When you are magnificent and resplendent and infinite everything under you most certainly isn’t. An ant under a hawk, a city under a pilot. A prison cell painted a fetching new colour. Everything was the same, and Black Hat was the same, and nothing ever changed and it happened over and over, again and again. Black Hat realized something rather simple.

“I’m never going to be content,” he said. He said it lightly, dearly, reaffirming nice weather to a loved one. He laughed. “I’m never going to be content! All along, it was there, and I missed it. I am never going to be content.”

This was what he was now. He would call it sad, and desperate, and shameful, had he anyone to regale. But he didn’t. It was just Black Hat. Alone, as he had always wanted. Unable to die, unable to live.

“... What in the blazes do I do now?”

* * *

  
Reading! Reading, reading, reading! Books, books, books!

Black Hat slumped over a page. Reading. Reading, reading, reading. Books, books, books. He drained the wine bottle and let it drop to the floor, smashing. The glass cut his bare feet when he stood. He staggered to the next bookshelf. He pulled out an armful, setting them on the desk and beginning again. He sat there for hours, his eye muddy, his head one large migraine that pressed hard into his neck. Reading. Reading. Reading. Books. Books. Books.

He fucking hated reading!

He wished he were illiterate, he was sick of reading, he was sick of it, sick of old dead men and their old dead books! He was sick of it, he wanted to vomit, he did, some nights; rancid, rotten people, rancid, rotten culture, rancid rotten dead stupid fucking books! All they did was speak and speak at him, until one day they stopped, until their open pages turned towards one another and they spoke about him behind his back, these stupid fucking dead trees and their dead ink and their dead, useless casings! Books in leather; shit in intestines, it was all atrocious!

He was breathless, scrabbling along the ground out of the room, turning away from the library and vowing never to return. He stumbled, gasping, along the hallway, feeling the wall with his hands. He turned, ran and turned again, over and over. The patterns of the wallpaper turned to follow him curiously, like cats at lights. He fell into one, pushing himself off and breathing in the dust. He tasted the scent, in the middle of his head. He spun around.

“Flug?”

Nothing. The hall was still. Silent, save for his ragged breathing.

“Flug?” He slurred again, louder. His tongue smacked at the air. “Dr Flug?”

He caught it again. Soap, deodorant, fuel and sweat. Black Hat tripped forward, following the smell.

“Flug? Are you there?”

He followed it downstairs, his hand on the bannister to steady himself. The carpets were thick with decay. The smell grew stronger.

“Flug?” He repeated. His voice was thin and sheer, barely-there under the creak of the wood. “Dr Flug? What time is it?”

He came to the door. The smell was there, then it wasn’t, coming in waves.

“Flug?”

He threw open the door, looked out over the threshold and recoiled. He slumped to his knees.

In half-blind delirium, he felt a cold hand on his shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> you boys ever have a sexual experience so mediocre you disown all of humanity
> 
> thanks for reading! longterm readers might notice a few nods to other fics! ;3c


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